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PotOnWheel
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890

Posted 12/30/2002 9:48 PM (GMT -6)

Tom: OK, try this. If God’s essence is unknowable then how do you know it’s not temporal? We don’t really have the right to say what it is or isn’t do we?

Al: What kind of change to do wish to introduce to your idea of God? That's one way to make the Trinity temporal. The other way is to take something called "divinity" and have the persons be derived from that. Problem is, that what you have then is a depersonalization of God. In fact, isn't that just the same model that the Open View is a reaction to? Just that the "classic" view has a different set of divine attributes.

For my money, Tom, the view of the Trinity that the Orthodox hold is far better.

Tom: Still, with Doc I'd say that something about God's inner Trinue life can be deduced from what he's revealed.

Al: What we see is what the Triune God does toward us in the economy. That interaction is "total" and not through an intermedary. But the Old Testement indications are that we just can't "take" the full dose.

......................

Tom: I read Leigh’s article long time ago and liked it very much. At the time I agreed that “one person two natures” didn’t communicate very much and bordered on being incoherent. But though Leigh attacks orthodoxy, he still believes in a high Christology. Jesus is full God and fully human. And THIS makes him OK by me.

I STILL see the "fully human" language. Lets look at this. OK? I wonder whether I prefer the phrase "truly human." (Calcedon) Where "the human nature subsists in the divine person." (Adams)

Adams writes (that article that eventually you know you will get to):

quote:
Rather than having two numerically distinct beings coexisting as the one person, we simply have an integration of the human nature into the divine nature, yet without confusion. As such, the human Jesus of Nazareth is ontically subordinate to and metaphysically dependent upon God the Son, the second person of the triune God. This, then, is what Chalcedon refers to as the hypostatic union of the two natures (divine and human) residing in the one person of Jesus. At the incarnation the divine person of Jesus is distributed, so to speak, throughout both a divine nature and a human nature such that the two natures are conjoined, yet distinct, into the one unique God-Man.

Check it out. I think Adams is still somewhere between Morris and Lossky. But his article is interesting.

WHAT'S THIS GOT TO DO WITH BIVALANCE? I DON'T KNOW. BUT IF BIVALANCE RELIES ON OR DEMANDS SYMMETRY, THEN ITS GOT EVERYTHING TO DO WITH IT. IF BIVALANCE ASSUMES SUCH SYMMETRY, AND THAT SYMMETRY ISN'T THERE, THEN ITS LIKE LEANING A BOARD AGAINST A DOOR THAT'S OPEN. (BOOM.)

Al

Alan Rhoda
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Date Joined May 2002
Total Posts : 680

Posted 12/31/2002 10:23 AM (GMT -6)

Tom: Alan, you said the article was written “to rebut the grounding objection to middle knowledge.” Looks to me like this would mean the article would support MK. From the title and your summary it seems that it supports (not rebuts) the grounding objection to MK. Is my grammar going down the tubes?

Alan: I'm afraid your grammar is going down the tubes, Tom.

What I said was that the article "critiques CRAIG's use of the principle of bivalence to rebut the grounding objection to MK." The closest verbal referent for "to rebut" is the verb "use", not the verb "critiques". Craig's is the one trying to rebut the grounding objection. Grant is critiquing Criag's rebuttal.

Happy New Year,
Alan

Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 1/1/2003 2:15 AM (GMT -6)

Alan: I'm afraid your grammar is going down the tubes, Tom.

Tom: Talk about the tubes! Flush me down Bro. I follow ya now.

Takes a while, but eventually I catch on.

Happy New Year!

Tom

"When you mix things up they get messy" Fred

GregBoyd
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 1818

Posted 1/1/2003 5:33 AM (GMT -6)

Alan: "all bivalence requires is that the disjunction be true. It does not imply anything about the truth value of the individual disjuncts."

Doc: I will seek out this article as soon as schools re-open. Thanks for the lead. It looks VERY intriguing. But why wait to get the article to discuss it? It wasn't immediately clear to me how a DISJUNCTION could be true without the values of the disjunction being assigned. To say "Proposition X is either true or false" seems to suggest that X IS (now) either true or false." But from what I can assertain, Grant is arguing that the principle of bivalence holds so long as one holds that "Proposition X WILL BECOME either true or false." Right?

Of course, all propositions can be restated in a non-temporal way. "Jones WILL be president in 2028" can be restated as "Jones is president in 2028". This latter proposition, it is argued, is either true or false. I have previously argued that it IS true or false, indexed to a possible world -- while it may yet be open as to which possible world will be actualized. The problem, however, is that this means that there is at least one proposition that is NEITHER true or false -- namely, a proposition expressing WHICH possible world will be actualized.

Grants approach, I'm guessing, rather admits that the proposition expressing which possible world will be actualized is indeed neither true or false, but this doesn't violate the principle of bivalence because it will be EITHER true or false. The disjunct holds, but the values of the disjuncted terms are not yet assigned.

Does this work? hmmmmmmmm

Doc

"In Christ...the ONLY THING that matters is faith energized by love." Galatians 5:6

geebob
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 94

Posted 1/1/2003 7:43 PM (GMT -6)

quote:
a) future tensed propositions are true or false, but God can't know these truths, for they are unknowable (William Haskers position),

Hasker says this?!?

No way! get outta here! that makes no sense. How does he defend this? I don't get it that if these propositions are true or false, why shouldn't God be able to know.

And How can clarence be free with regard to his omlet (hasker's example)? So what if God doesn't know, Clarence still cannot violate the truth of the proposition.

I knew Hasker used the term "unknowable," but I though that that was because what couldn't be know simply was not true and what was true in place of the proposition in question was a proposition that involved multiple possibilities, which, of course God would know.

When I explain the open view to folks with regard to omniscience, I actually give a mix of Doc's answer with aristotle's (I didn't know it was aristotle's). The future does not exist except in what is determined that will happen during the present or is left open to several possibilities, which become fewer in number as time goes on.

I will gladly pay you teusday for a hamburger today.

-Wimpy

Edited by - geebob on 01/02/2003 12:55:31 AM

Edited by - geebob on 01/02/2003 01:04:23 AM

Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 1/7/2003 3:35 AM (GMT -6)

Doc-

I was reading an article of Bill Craig’s today [“High Ross’s Extra-Dimensional Deity: A Review Article,” JETS (June, 1999)], and ran across this interesting comment of his that’s very much akin to infinite intelligence:

quote:
In one place Dr. Ross suggests that the postulation of a hyper-time helps to answer a third-grader’s question about how God can listen to a billion prayers at once. Not only does Dr. Ross seem to get his answer backwards (he, in effect, turns our time into a hyper-time above time instead of saying God has infinitely many hyper-instants at which to listen to each prayer in succession), but his answer dreadfully depreciates divine omniscience. Rather than cast God anthropomorphically as a cognitively limited, hyper-dimensional telephone operator, Dr. Ross should have explained to this third-grader friend that just as a super-computer can do millions of operations at once, God is infinitely more intelligent than a super-computer and so his lines never get jammed![bold mine]

I thought it was interesting. Craig essentially is arguing that we over-anthropomorphize God when we assume him incapable of infinite multi-tasking within one dimension of time.

Tom

Love never ends

GregBoyd
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 1818

Posted 1/7/2003 4:30 PM (GMT -6)

Tom: I thought it was interesting. Craig essentially is arguing that we over-anthropomorphize God when we assume him incapable of infinite multi-tasking within one dimension of time.

Doc: I caught that quote when I read the article last year. Craig has all the right instincts. If only he could see that might-counterfactuals have truth value independent of would-counterfactuals. God's infinite multi-tasking includes possibilities, which just as much competency, and no loss of providential anticipation, as settled realities.

Doc

"In Christ...the ONLY THING that matters is faith energized by love." Galatians 5:6

Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 1/7/2003 6:55 PM (GMT -6)

Must be his diet!

Tom

Love never ends

skepticbud
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 4

Posted 1/9/2003 2:38 AM (GMT -6)

I feel that much of this debate on god's knowledge of the future could be answered for them by appeal to the bible.

When i was a Christian, I attended seminary, and one of my assignments in biblical theology was to pick a theological heresey of my own choosing and then provide a biblical rebuttal. Nope, we wasn't liberals.

First, the statements on god's sovereignty are so explicit that they require that god not only knows the future decisions of a man, but knows it because god himself causes the person to use his freewill that way....

"For God has put it in their hearts to execute His purpose by having a common purpose, and by giving their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God will be fulfilled." (Revelation 17:17, NASB)

God knew that Pharaoh wouldn't listen to Moses. How? Probably because god had planned to harden pharaoh even before Moses said his first "let my people go"....

"The LORD said to Moses, "When you go back to Egypt see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders which I have put in your power; but I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go." (Exodus 4:21)

God boasts that he even knows what thoughts people will be thinking in the future!

"10. Thus saith the Lord God; It shall also come to pass, that at the same time shall things come into thy mind, and thou shalt think an evil thought:
11. And thou shalt say, I will go up to the land of unwalled villages; I will go to them that are at rest, that dwell safely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having neither bars nor gates,
12. To take a spoil, and to take a prey; to turn thine hand upon the desolate places that are now inhabited, and upon the people that are gathered out of the nations, which have gotten cattle and goods, that dwell in the midst of the land." (Ezekiel 38:10:12, KJV)

The following quote demonstrates the kind of image god wants in the minds of those who read his words when he talks about his ability to make people do what he wants them to do:

3. And say, Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal:
4. And I will turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws, and I will bring thee forth, and all thine army, horses and horsemen, all of them clothed with all sorts of armour, even a great company with bucklers and shields, all of them handling swords..." (Ezekiel 38:3-4)

There's not much more that could be said differently to express the idea that god can force people to desire doing what he wants them to do. I doubt that Ezekiel was an open theist.

I have another consideration, one that would lead us to believe that if open theism were biblically justified, god could get proved to be a liar someday....

15. At this time Peter stood up in the midst of the brethren (a gathering of about one hundred and twenty persons was there together), and said,
16. "Brethren, the Scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit foretold by the mouth of David concerning Judas, who became a guide to those who arrested Jesus.
17. "For he was counted among us and received his share in this ministry."
18. (Now this man acquired a field with the price of his wickedness, and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his intestines gushed out.
19. And it became known to all who were living in Jerusalem; so that in their own language that field was called Hakeldama, that is, Field of Blood.)
20. "For it is written in the book of Psalms, 'LET HIS HOMESTEAD BE MADE DESOLATE, AND LET NO ONE DWELL IN IT'; and, 'LET ANOTHER MAN TAKE HIS OFFICE.' (Acts 1:15-20, NASB)

Did God know that it would be specifically Judas Iscariot who would betray Jesus? If so, then god predicted it long ago in the OT quotations Peter cited above, which he said were fulfilled by him, and the debate is over with.

But if god didn't know who specifically would betray Jesus, then there is no real guarantee that anybody would have betrayed him, making Christ's statements that it was necessary for him to suffer betrayal more rhetorical than truthful. You have to think: it would be a logical impossibility for god to know for sure that Jesus would definitely be betrayed, but to remain ignorant the whole time of the identity of the betrayer. If he didn't know the identity, whatever tipped him off that the betrayal would occur in the first place?

Pondering these questions, makes it seem that the open theist views god as sort of a gambler, realizing that sooner or later, the thing that he wants to get done, will eventually get done, but doesn't quite know how it will get done. Such a god doesn't come to one's mind when one reads of his predictions of the future, in which he seems overtly confident.

It is my position as an atheist, that although texts could be cited which most certainly mean god didn't know something, there are other texts which 'prove' that he has access to 100% of the smallest details about the entire future.

Does our freewill give us the ability to avoid playing the part we are predicted to play in god's foreknowledge? If so, the biblical statements about god's foreknowledge seem to be a waste of time, since inaccurate foreknowledge is stuff that humans themselves can drum up by the barrel-fulls.

If our freewill doesn't give us sufficient freedom to avoid playing the part we are foreseen to play in god's foresight, then god's foreknowledge is a rebuttal to our 'freewill'. With the biblical statements on god's sovereignty I cited above, the oft-heard objection that god chooses to remain ignorant of the future so that we will remain free, seems contrived at best.

What's funny is that this popular objection logically leaves the information on what we will certainly do, in existence, meaning, our future decisions are still recorded somewhere, but god refuses to look at that source of information. If god can choose to peek in at this info from time to time, then it still obviously exists somewhere, and because it still exists, our future actions are still foreknown, and god's refusal to look at the video-tape doesn't mean the characters in the movie can therefore quit that movie and do another :)

Cheers,
skepticbud

skepticbud
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 4

Posted 1/9/2003 2:44 AM (GMT -6)

Whoops!

I mentioned that I did a rebuttal of a heresy for theology class at seminary, and forgot to tell what that heresy was!

It was a biblical rebuttal of Molina's Theory of Middle Knowledge.

skepticbud

Alan Rhoda
Registered Member

Date Joined May 2002
Total Posts : 680

Posted 1/9/2003 9:33 PM (GMT -6)

Hey Skepticbud,

Your raise a lot of good questions. Only have time for a couple brief remarks, though.

First, I think you should consider reposting this into a new thread, because I think it would get more attention there than buried here among arcane discussions of the principle of bivalence.

Second, I'm puzzled by two statements of yours. You begin by saying that "much of this debate on god's knowledge of the future could be answered for them by appeal to the bible." But later you say, "although texts could be cited which most certainly mean god didn't know something, there are other texts which 'prove' that he has access to 100% of the smallest details about the entire future." If you are correct in this last assertion, then the Bible is just simply internally inconsistent on this issue. How then could appeal to the Bible settle the debate on God's foreknowledge?

Third, none of the texts you cite proves that God "has access to 100% of the smallest details about the entire future." At best they show that God sovereignly limits or overrides human freedom in SOME cases, e.g., as in hardening PHAROAH'S heart. But whether the Bible even teaches that much has been disputed by open theists. I'll let Greg elaborate if he so wishes.

Fourth and finally, it is well-known among Christian scholars that NT applications of OT prophecies are often quite strange. When you look at an OT passage referred to by a NT author, it often seems like they are reading a lot into the OT text. Either the NT authors are incredibly slopply in their handling of the OT, or their view of prophecy is somehow different from how we typically think about it. (Again I appeal to Greg to elaborate since this is his area of expertise, not mine.) The bottom line, is that I don't think we should make much of the Peter's application of that OT passage to Judas. If the OT passage taken in its own context made a CLEAR reference to Judas, then we might have a problem. But in fact the OT passage is so vague that I find myself wondering how Peter could ever have seen THAT as a specific prediction concerning Judas. If Peter and the other NT authors are not hermeneutical nitwits, as the principle of charity would suggest, then they must have a different view of OT prophecy than us. As to what that view might be, I must at this point confess ignorance.

I'd love to interact more, but it's 12:30am, and I still haven't eaten dinner! Bye for now.

Alan

Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 1/10/2003 12:05 AM (GMT -6)

Skepticbud: It is my position as an atheist, that although texts could be cited which most certainly mean god didn't know something, there are other texts which 'prove' that he has access to 100% of the smallest details about the entire future.

Tom: How could this be your position “as an atheist”? If you believe the texts “prove” God has access to the future then you believe God exists. If you’re an atheist, you don’t believe the texts “prove” anything about God. What am I missing?

Tom

Love never ends

Chucks3371
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Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 28

Posted 1/13/2003 2:24 PM (GMT -6)

Blacksheep wrote

quote:

Chucks3371:

I'm certainly not qualified to discuss Godel's theorem, especially with a mathematician, but that wasn't my intent. You're correct that I maybe attributed to much to Godel, Bertrand Russel would be a better source. The point I wished to make was that no axiomatic logical system can describe the truth value of all logical propositions, hence describe reality fully. Whether this is relevant to this discussion I'm not entirely certain, but I have an inclination that there are some points of congruence.

<snip>

I agree that no axiomatic logical system can encompass reality. That is why I oppose those theologies that attempt to extract a set of true propositions from the rich mosaic of biblical writings. However, his has nothing to do with Godel's theorem. So I confess at the outset that this is irrelevant to this discussion; I'll proceed for the sake of completeness, and also because the thought process behind it had something to do with my own self-understanding. Maybe it will help someone else in the future.

Godel first reduced all mathematical statements to a number via an algorithm he developed; e.g., as though Euclid's theorem could be assigned the number 10958209376987456123. What this does is strip every theorem of any meaning at all; i.e., it is all syntax and no semantics. He then constructed a number that corresponded to a "true" proposition, yet was unprovable within the system. However, this alleged theorem is meaningless, so mathematics have continued on as though Godel had never existed.

So therein lies my gripe: symbolic logic proceeds by rejecting all notions of "meaning" and "semantics" (since they are not quantifiable) and assuming syntax is all. This is the path taken by materialistic philosophies from Darwin to Dawkins to Dennett et al. Dennett in his "Consciousness Explained" came to the "logical" conclusion that consciousness (what he called "qualia") simply does not exist. At that point it seems appropriate to question the assumptions behind that chain of reasoning.

As for quantum theory, I don't understand it's relevance to theology either, as it is neither true nor intelligible.

PotOnWheel
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890

Posted 1/13/2003 3:44 PM (GMT -6)

diacentro.physics.auth.gr/rtalks/pdfs/nikolaidis01.doc

THE METAPHYSICS OF REASON

ABSTRACT: We will briefly review the developments in Physics and Mathematics during the last century. We find that while Science was born and grown under the auspices of Cartesian principles, the 20th century Physics and Mathematics defy the Cartesian premises. The emerging unified viewpoint on cosmos, renounces the dualisms (subject-object, reason-faith, cogitation-being) and incorporates elements of the traditions.

Talk given at the “Science and Religion” Symposium, Bucarest, Nov. 8-11 2001
by Argyris Nicolaidis
Theoretical Physics Dept.
University of Thessaloniki
Thessaloniki 54006, Greece
Tel. 0310-420489, 0310-998143
e-mail: nicolaid@ccf.auth.gr

Chucks3371
Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 28

Posted 1/13/2003 5:26 PM (GMT -6)

Kaolinite recommended

quote:

diacentro.physics.auth.gr/rtalks/pdfs/nikolaidis01.doc
THE METAPHYSICS OF REASON

Very nice article, but I am prone to accept such metaphysical speculations. It shows that contemporary science and mathematics -- in his interpretation -- are consistent with traditional metaphysics. Of course, from the point of view of this discussion, this presupposes, too, that the Platonic is equivalent to -- or at least consistent with -- the Christian world view.

A couple of comments:
I'm not convinced that Godel's theorem disproves the principle of bivalence -- the undecidability of a proposition is not equivalent to its truth value. And he does not address my comments about Godel.

We cannot count on science to replace faith; science will always change, but faith is certain. Recalling Plato, we cannot expect to understand ultimate reality from studying the world of becoming, ie, empirical science.
(Of course, Plato, Aristotle, and Eastern metaphysics regard the world of becoming (read history) as less real than being. Is this truly the Christian position, where we believe God acts in history? Therein lies the tension of combining classical philosophy with Christian theology)

As for science refuting nominalism, the opposite has also happened. Dawkins comes close to denying the concept of species, since only the gene is important. Rorty denies interior states, replacing them with biochemical language. E.g., "I had an adrenaline rush". And Dennett denies consciousness itself. This extreme nominalism is reflected in the elimination of meaning and semantics and replacing it all with symbols and syntax. That is the logical conclusion reached by writers such as Hofstadter and Dennett.

So it seems to me that faith is first required to see the world as the professor does.

GregBoyd
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 1818

Posted 1/13/2003 5:59 PM (GMT -6)

I simply want to register my heartbreak

at seeing yet another needless causalty of

simplistic fundamentalist theology.

I feel for you Skepticbud.

Seriously.

The points you raise about God making people evil and about the future being determined are perfectly legitimate given your interpretation of the passages in question. I'd probably be an atheist too if I thought the texts mean what you think they mean.

But they need not (in my view, CAN not) mean what you think they mean. I don't have time to go into it, but if you have the motivation , check out my book, Satan and the Problem of Evil or John Sanders, The God who Risks.

I'm so sorry you were fed the narrow line you were fed. It makes me thankful I went to a totally secular university for my undergrad studies.

Doc

"In Christ...the ONLY THING that matters is faith energized by love." Galatians 5:6

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